Godess of the Ice Realm loti-5

by David Drake

  "You needed your sleep," said Liane, raising her arms to let the silk undertunic shimmer down over her like pale blue water.

  "There's never time to do everything a king needs to doandsleep," said the image of Carus. He appeared to be looking out over a landscape that wasn't part of the vision in Garric's mind. "But you have to sleep."

  Garric pulled on his own inner tunic. He wore silk robes in court, but his undergarments were always wool because he felt uncomfortable with smoother, harder, fabrics next to his skin. He grinned: Duzi knew that he was uncomfortable enough at public functions as it was.

  "I'd have awakened you shortly," said Liane as she looked critically at the robe she'd laid on a chest, then put it on again. "You asked your friends to meet with you for dinner."

  "Right," said Garric. "I trust my council, but I'm not an Ornifal noble and most of them are. They don't have the same instincts that I do-and frankly, Iprefer my instincts."

  "And mine?" Liane said, smiling sidelong.

  Garric took her in his arms and kissed her; with love if not with the passion of a few hours earlier.

  "Liane?" he said, turning to choose an outer tunic from the rack; he wouldn't wear his cuirass to dinner. He cocked the shutters farther open as he mused. Then he went on, "Is there a shrine to the Sister here in Carcosa?"

  "I think there probably is," Liane said. If she was surprised, her calm face didn't betray it. "If I can't find it in the gazetteer I brought, I'll check with my local agents. How public is your interest?"

  She made sure her dress was presentable, then walked toward the adjoining room of the suite where servants had laid out the luggage she'd brought from Valles. Most of her gear consisted of document cases, generally in code. Liane's father had been a far-travelled merchant, and she'd turned his shipping contacts into an intelligence service which reached into every major city in the Isles.

  "It's not a secret," Garric said, strapping on his right sandal. His footwear was functional, not a pair of court slippers. He'd sooner have been barefoot in this weather, but that would've shocked the palace servants-though not his friends. "I just had a thought."

  He was glad Liane didn't question him about his interest; he wasn't sure what he would answer.

  But just maybe, maybe, his dream had solved a problem that he'd known he'd face as soon as he decided to come to Carcosa.

  Chapter 5

  "The chamberlain suggested we eat in the roof garden," Liane explained as Garric opened the door to the corridor. "He says we can move under the marquee if it starts raining again."

  The squad of Blood Eagles jumped to attention. It was Garric's whim not to have guards or even attendants in his rooms while he was present. He wasn't as fiercely hostile to the idea as Ilna was, but he'd been too long waiting on others in his father's inn to be able to ignore the fact that servants were people who saw and who heard and who spoke to their friends.

  "So long as you know how to get there," Garric said, wryly amused. He'd always thought of himself as having a good sense of direction, but that was before he had to get around palaces like this one, which covered as much ground as all of Barca's Hamlet. While he was outdoors he'd been picking up cues from the sun and stars without ever being conscious of them; in a maze of corridors as lost as if he were trapped in a cave.

  Not that there was ever a likelihood of that he'd bealone in that cave. As soon as the door opened, half a dozen voices chorused, "Your highness, if I could have a moment-" or some close approximation of that. Garric recognized three of the speakers-one was Lord Tadai's chief clerk-but the others were strangers, and they all had either a document in their hands or some other person in tow.

  "Notnow," Garric said. Carus had been right: there weren't enough hours to do all the things he was expected to do. Having people pick at him like yarn thrown to a litter of kittens didn't make the job easier. "See my clerks!"

  The Blood Eagles forced the petitioners back with an enthusiasm that showed they'd been waiting for a chance. They were present to protect Prince Garric, and the crowding civilians-any of whom could be an assassin-made the guards' job difficult. Add to that the fact that the soldiers thought of all civilians as soft, cowardly parasites, the thumps and shoving of the ball-blunted spearshafts were more than was strictly required to get Garric room to move.

  Garric touched the guard officer's arm and said, "More gently, Captain Physos. The Shepherd knows it's as hard to find good clerks as it is good soldiers. Despite that I don't have time to deal with them right at the moment."

  He grinned in response to the image of the king in his mind. Carus was nodding in morose agreement.

  The petitioners stepped back; they'd made their attempt, one which at least the courtiers themselves had known was unlikely to succeed. The outsiders fell into agitated conversation with the palace personnel who'd gotten them within sight of the prince but hadn't been able to breach the final line of black armor. Powerful armies hadn't been able to get through the Blood Eagles…

  Transoms over the doors to the rooms on either side, and clerestory windows around the half-story above the second floor, were the corridor's only illumination, so Garric's eyes were still adapting. The man waiting in an open doorway was only a blurred figure to him until he raised his blackwood staff-of-office; its three gold bands glinted in a shaft of light.

  "A moment, Captain Physos!" Garric said, touching Liane's shoulder to warn her he was halting. "Councilor Reise, did you need to speak with me?"

  Garric hadn't had time-hadn't taken time-to give Reise more than a cursory greeting when the new advisor to the Vicar of Haft arrived with Liane during the assembly on the waterfront. He felt a pang of remorse at not having done more, but he thought Reise could understand why the younger man had set his priorities as he had.

  "I'd appreciate a moment of your time, your highness," Reise said, bowing and making an elaborate gesture with his left hand. That was Valles etiquette, more complicated than anything required by the court in Carcosa; but it was in Valles that Reise had learned his trade. Several men stood in the room behind him.

  Reise or-Laver was a middle-aged man of average height and appearance. He'd succeeded as a servant in the royal palace and later in the household of Countess Tera of Haft. When the countess died during the riots that put Count Lascarg in power, Reise had bought a run-down inn in Barca's Hamlet and managed it so ably that he'd become one of the wealthiest men in the borough. There he'd raised a son and daughter who read classical literature and who were fit to rule the kingdom when fate made them rulers.

  The only thing at which Reise had failed was life itself. He was a sad, frustrated man, burdened with a shrewish wife and an indelible awareness of what might have been.

  He was Garric's father.

  "Yes, of course, Councilor Reise," Garric said. "Liane, if you'll go on and tell people I'm on my way…?"

  She squeezed his hand, curtseyed to Reise, and gestured the four Blood Eagles who were her personal escort to proceed. The other nine soldiers and their commander remained with Garric. Captain Physos planted himself squarely between son and father.

  "Captain," Garric said, feeling his anger mount. "I vouch for this man."

  "Maybe," the soldier said. "But there's the other three."

  Garric opened his mouth, not quite sure what his next words would be nor where the business was going to end. Reise is my father! But all the guards cared was that Garric not be murdered-or at least not be murdered while they personally were on duty.

  "There's no reason soldiers shouldn't be present," Reise said calmly. He motioned the men accompanying him back into the chamber so that four of the guards could push through and check it for threats. The room was servants' quarters for a suite; the connecting door was barred from this side, and the men with Reise were no assassins.

  One of them was elderly and the other two were well into middle age. They were expensively dressed, though with a degree of flashiness that suggested they'd made their money rather tha
n inheriting it. The scar across the cheek of the balding man wasn't the result of a shaving accident, though it might well have been done with a razor.

  "These gentlemen are Masters Tartlin, Bennerr, and Wates, representing the Northern Shippers' Association here in Carcosa, your highness," Reise resumed. His tone was pleasantly modulated, though seemingly without emotion. "I had dealings with Master Wates-"

  A man of Reise's age nodded. He was a close physical double for Garric's father, except that his features were as hard as an axe blade.

  "-some years ago when I needed to leave Carcosa quickly with my family. Without Master Wates' help I might not have succeeded, so when he asked me to arrange a meeting if that were possible…?"

  "Understood," Garric said, suddenly hard-faced. Since the newborn Garric had been part of that family, Reise wasn't the only man present who owed Wates a favor. He looked at the eldest delegate, assuming he was the leader, and said, "If you can do it quickly, tell me what you need from me, Master Tartlin."

  "These past three years, there's been winged demons preying on the shipping coming down the passage between Haft and Sandrakkan," the old man said. When he turned his head slightly, Garric saw that his left ear had once been pierced; the hole had scarred over in the time since Tartlin stopped wearing a ring there. "Lascarg appointed a Commander of the Strait, that's Lusius. If we pay through the nose for Lusius to put his own guards on our ships, they get through; but if we don't, well, there's just as many attacks as before."

  "Commercial houses here have been switching to ships doing the southern route," Wates put in. "I don't blame them-but we can't eat Lusius' charges, we'd be bankrupt in a month if we did. The old count wouldn't listen to us but we're hoping you will, your princeship."

  Garric nodded. "Ihave listened," he said. "Give me three days-"

  He'd learned when he first became ruler that nothing was as simple as it looked when one of two interested parties described it. Reise had brought these men to him, but even so Garric would take the time to understand the problem before he promised to act.

  "-to study the matter and I'll take the action that seems good to me."

  "You mean-" said the scarred delegate, Bennerr.

  Reise touched the end of his staff to Bennerr's lips, a perfectly calculated gesture that startled Garric as much as if he'd heard his father start to sing.

  "His highness means," said Reise, "that he will take the action best suited to the needs of the kingdom. You all, as good citizens and supporters of the crown, will be grateful for that action whatever it may be."

  "Right," said Master Wates. "That's exactly right, your highness."

  Garric turned. "Captain Physos," he said as he started for the door, "do you know the way to the roof garden or do we need to find a guide?"

  "If you don't mind I'll take you there myself, your highness," said Reise unexpectedly. Garric turned and faced his dry smile.

  "I should remember the way quite clearly," Reise continued. "Countess Tera was fond of dining there whenever the weather permitted."

  Garric made a brusque gesture of agreement. He didn't trust himself to speak, because he was afraid if he did he'd say something to embarrass both himself and his father.

  ***

  Sharina chewed her second bite of meatloaf with a carefully neutral expression. It wasn't bad; it was good, in fact, once she got her mind around the fact it wasn't mutton as she'd assumed but rather beef. They raised cattle in the north of Haft; Count Lascarg came from there, so the palace cooks and their larders emphasized beef dishes.

  "I've been thinking about my coronation," Garric said, staring into his tankard as he swirled the last of his beer. He seemed oddly unsure. "As Prince of Haft, on the site of the old royal palace down by the harbor."

  Sharina's eyes narrowed. Garric wasn't the sort who pretended to know all the answers, but-always, and especially since he'd become regent of the kingdom-he'd picked a path and proceeded along it. He knew that he might be wrong but he knew also that he was better off acting than dithering.

  Cashel stood, taking his empty mug and Sharina's by the rims in one hand. He walked to the serving table at the side, out of earshot of the diners. Across it was a line of Blood Eagles, and beyond them stood servants in nervous frustration at not being able to dispense the dishes and cups themselves. The guards let them reach through to the table to exchange full platters for empty ones, but Garric and his friends were serving themselves.

  Sharina winced to see her lover carry the mugs that way, then smiled faintly. Cashel had taken most of his meals alone on a hillside while he watched his sheep; the rest were with his sister Ilna who cooked and washed for the pair of them. Nobody'd ever told him not to stick his fingers into the cups and bowls he was carrying.

  Sharina wouldn't have to either, because Ilna had seen the incident. She'd explain the etiquette to her brother, in private because she loved him. Nobody needed a second explanation when Ilna had provided the first one, though. Sharina's smile widened.

  To Garric she said, "Judging from the crowd in the harbor, the people here are at least as enthusiastic as those in Valles that there's really a kingdom again. Are you worried about how the other islands will react if you're crowned on Haft?"

  "My sources say that folk on Sandrakkan and Blaise understand that because Garric's of the old royal line of Haft, it's appropriate for him to be crowned here," said Liane, speaking as Garric's spymaster rather than merely as a friend; though a friend too, of course.

  She smiled broadly. When she didn't have to be formal, Liane had a boisterous sense of humor well matched to Garric's own. "While the Earl of Sandrakkan has his own view of his island's proper place in the restored Kingdom of the Isles," she continued, "I wouldnot recommend Prince Garric be crowned in the Earl's palace in Erdin."

  Twenty years before, the uncle of the present Earl of Sandrakkan had claimed to be King of the Isles. The royal army-the army of Ornifal-had defeated and killed him, but his heir and the Sandrakkan nobles more generally hadn't lost the notion that they were better men than those snivelling merchants from Ornifal.

  "They're more pleased than not, the ones I've talked to," said Chalcus said as he refilled his cup from the beaker he'd brought to the dining table. He, Liane, and Tenoctris were drinking wine; the others stuck to beer as they'd been raised on in Barca's Hamlet-though here it was brewed with hops instead of the dark germander bitters of home. "They're not the nobles, as you'd guess, but sailors and shopkeepers…"

  He grinned, swigged, and went on, "Nobody minds that it's Carcosa, so long as it isn't Valles. You're one of theirs, Prince Garric, not somebody who's on the throne because an ancestor owned twenty acres of pasture on Ornifal."

  Cashel settled himself again between Sharina and Tenoctris, setting down the mugs without spilling them. He licked ale from his thumb. Sharina hugged him.

  There was no formal requirement that Garric be crowned prince, here or anywhere else. King Valence the Third had publicly acknowledged 'Prince Garric of Haft' as his son and heir apparent; that was sufficient for legality. The government and royal army had accepted Garric as regent as well, which gave him the real authority-so far as Ornifal went.

  For the past several hundred years the King of the Isles had been little more than a Duke of Ornifal to whom the rulers of other islands paid lip service. Garric was determined to reform the Isles into a real kingdom with unity and a degree of universal peace unknown since the fall of the Old Kingdom, so he'd decided to be crowned Prince of Haft in Carcosa where King Carus and his predecessors as Kings of the Isles had their coronations.

  His friends, his formal advisors, and even the officers of the army led by Lord Waldron, a stiff-necked noble from northern Ornifal, had agreed with the plan. Sharina didn't understand Garric's apparent hesitation now.

  "The problem is deciding who'll offer me the diadem," Garric said, still frowning into his beer. "It was always the Chief Priest of the Lady. It never crossed my mind to wonder about it.
"

  He looked around the circle of his friends with a fierce expression. "But here in Carcosa, that'd mean I was joining a gang. And I'mnot going to do that."

  The anger faded back into the previous look of troubled doubt. "If I can't be crowned by the priest of the Lady or the priest of the Shepherd…," he continued.

  Liane turned and stared at Garric with dawning horror. Sharina had seen Liane face a demon with equanimity; her present expression was completely inexplicable.

  "Then I thought, maybe the third aspect of God," Garric said. He was barely muttering, obviously ill at ease. "I thought I could be crowned at the shrine of the Prophesying Sister. Liane says the priest is just a functionary; the temple doesn't have any part in the politics of Carcosa."

  Now Sharina understood Liane's look of horror. Her own face probably mirrored it.

  "Garric, you can't be crowned by the Sister," Sharina said, controlling her voice with an effort. "If you're worried about what people will think, they'll think it's disgusting!"

  "The Sister rules death and the underworld," Garric said, straightening and speaking with obvious anger. "Death isn't evil. Death is a part of life!"

  "That's words!" Sharina said. "People don't swear by the Sister, theycurse by Her."

  Liane nodded firmly. "Sharina's right," she said. "It isn't politicallyconceivable that you'd be crowned in a shrine of the sister. Besides, it's a little place on the side of the High City, the old citadel. The only reason the shrine still exists is that its an oracle. I doubt there'd be room for twenty people to stand in it."

  She looked around the table. "Am I wrong?" she demanded. "What do the rest of you think? Mistress Ilna?"

  Ilna looked at Liane without expression. "I don't know," she said, as calm as ice over a stream. No one could guess how swiftly the current might be tumbling beneath that frozen sheet. "Mistress, I don't believe in gods and I don't know anything about how cities are run. I just don't know."